redundant frame, redundant frame.

By framing the main narrative of Münchhausen, it effectively diminished the fantastic elements, because I just attributed all of the strange things that happened to the 'embellishment' of the storyteller. It is interesting that there is a frame at all, considering that the filmmakers and the storyteller are effectively doing the same thing- entertaining an audience with a partially true, partially fabricated story. I am unconvinced by Rentscler's argument that this film behaves propagandistically, mostly due to the wide array of problems that Rentschler himself cites, such as the disconnect between Münchhausen's professed self [the illusion], and his actual self. Perhaps I was not paying enough attention, but I read very little by way of propaganda, and that little was also problematic. For example, Baron Münchhausen mentions the notion of Heimat early on, but spends the rest of the film wandering the world wide.

I think that the only true propagandistic device that this film employs well is escapism. Just like the couple listening to the storyteller in the frame, we are hopefully swallowed into this alternate reality of the story, and hopefully we forget about being bombed, and hopefully our spirits are raised. This film doesn't do any sort of indoctrination very seriously. The only thing that is really Nazi about it is that it doesn't work to undo any of the ground covered before it.